View report page

14
the water, had the fullest confidence in himself also to settle the Cholera
question was clear enough; when, without any very obvious tribulation of
countenance, a mere spectator of the scene was permitted to question a witness
whether any person, equally with a medical man, was not competent to
speak of the water in connection with the epidemic? Now Captain Tyler
shall himself answer this question, and at once serve as an illustration. One
eminent scientific witness, walking in at this moment, saw how matters were
settled, and beat a retreat; he was not going to be represented as saying
what he did not mean, so presently returned with his own private reporter,
and persistently refused to give evidence, unless he had a sufficient guarantee
by this check that it should go forth to the world what he really said and
meant, and not what he did not say and did not mean.
The contrast between this and another tribunal of enquiry having some
bearing on the same business in the House of Lords will bear no comparison.
There, there were no pert interruptions; the witness was in the presence of
gentlemen; the evidence was given to its close, and no vagaries were permitted
from lookers-on, claiming a residence within the parishes of Mile End
and Whitechapel.
Now before bringing special facts to the service of the enquiry, it may
be as well to hear what two witnesses have to say, whose evidence I havo
roughly but correctly transcribed from Captain Tyler's Report.
Dr. Letheby, the distinguished Professor of Chemistry, of the London
Hospital, said "that he found in the Old Ford water one-third less of
organic matter in June, when Cholera broke out, than in the following
December, when it had ceased. There was not a single case of disease
(Cholera) amongst the fifty residents in the London Hospital, nor did a single
case occur among the 400 ordinary patients, though the water was all supplied
from Old Ford. At the East London Union Workhouse, with 300
inmates, there was only 1 case of Cholera, brought from a distance. In the
City of London, Eastern division, in 161 houses with 1,732 inhabitants,
supplied by the Old Ford water, there was but 1 death, the remainder 4,495
houses, with 40,673 inhabitants, had 62 deaths from the New River Company.
If the East London Company's water had been charged with poison,
it ought to have commenced throughout the area in point of time, duration,
and intensity. There was little or no Cholera at Stamford Hill and Clapton,